Crises in the History of the Papacy: A study of twenty famous popes whose careers and whose influence were important in the development of the church and in the history of the worldMcCabe, Joseph
History
Crises in the History of the Papacy: A study of twenty famous popes whose careers and whose influence were important in the development of the church and in the history of the world
McCabe, Joseph
Catholic Church -- History; Papacy -- History
With Frederic of Prussia, also, he had friendly relations. He was the
first Pope to recognize the title of "King of Prussia" assumed in 1701
by the Electors of Brandenburg, and in this again he overruled the
opposition of the cardinals. In 1744 Frederic begged the Pope to make
Scatfgoch, a Breslau canon whom the King liked, coadjutor to the Bishop
of Breslau. Scatfgoch talked with scandalous license about religion and
morals; it was said at Rome that he dipped his crucifix into his wine
to give the Saviour the first drink. Benedict, to Frederic's anger,
refused; but three years later, when the bishop died, and the Nuncio
reported the conversion of the canon, the Pope gratified Frederic by
making him bishop. Frederic permitted the erection of a Catholic chapel
at Berlin.
The new Catholic world beyond the seas made more than one claim on the
untiring Pope. Immediately after his election we find him sending a
Vicar Apostolic to settle the troubles of the Maronites of Syria, and
in 1744 he reconciled and regulated the affairs of the Greek Melchites
of Antioch. In the farther East a fierce controversy still raged, both
in China and India, regarding the heathen rites and practices which the
Jesuit missionaries permitted their native converts to retain. Clement
XI., Innocent XIII., and Benedict XIII. had successively employed him,
when he was an official of the Curia, to prepare a verdict on these
"Chinese and Malabar rites," but it was reported that the Jesuits
still defied the orders of the Popes. In his private letters to
Tencin, Benedict sternly condemns the "tergiversations" of the Jesuit
missionaries, but in his Papal pronouncements he is more cautious. His
Bulls _Ex Quo Singulari_,[332] which puts an end to the trouble in
China, and _Omnium Solicitudinum_,[333] which condemns the practices
in Malabar (India), are scholarly and severe treatises. They hardly
mention the Jesuits, but they leave no loophole for those casuistic
missionaries. From the other side of the globe Benedict received
complaints that Christians were still enslaving the American natives,
on the pretext of converting them, and he renewed the prohibition
issued by Paul III. and Urban VIII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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